Mr Hazara, I presume?

I met my first fellow Hazra – tomayto, tomaato; Hazra, Hazara, same difference – in a battered Toyota taxi on my way back from a slum near the Kabul University area today, writes Indrajit Hazra.

I met my first fellow Hazra – tomayto, tomaato; Hazra, Hazara, same difference – in a battered Toyota taxi on my way back from a slum near the Kabul University area today. Two chaps, keen that I visit their school, escorted me into a bylane with the craggy mountain range overlooking a garbage dump. But when the boys, after taking my email address and making me promise that I wouldn’t ever forget them, told me in front of their school that the school was shut for elections and Ramzan, I had a brief anxiety attack. I would now be dragged inside a meat shop and then be on YouTube. But the boys were very kind, of course, and said that they would put me in a cab if I could drop them in front of Kabul Medical College. It was after the two juvenile non-delinquents were dropped off that I tried chatting up Mr Aminullah, the taxi driver. Going by his Genghis Khan looks, I asked him whether he was an Uzbek or a Tajik. He replied without taking his eyes off the road, “I’m Hazara.” I told him my name, which was when he turned his head to me and said, “You a Hazara? No!” Feeling slightly slighted, I nervously laughed and told him that I wasn’t, but I must have Hazara roots. He looked at me before putting on yet another old Bollywood music cassette that real Afghans seem to love so much. And he chuckled throughout the rest of the drive.

HT Image

There’s no news but good news
Nothing like the totally objective Indian media, I say with one hand on my heart, another in my pocket and the other tapping away on my unbiased keyboard. It turns out that the Afghan government issued an ‘advisory’ to newspapers and television channels about election coverage. Local editors were called sometime back and told that negative news and violence would be ‘frowned upon’. There was some confusion, especially from the international media, about what constitutes the term ‘frowned upon’. While venerable western journalists were explaining the theological difference between an ‘advisory’ (‘Please don’t air or publish bad news’) and a ‘prohibition’ (‘You are not allowed to air or publish bad news’) to their local tag teams, Afghan mediapersons tried to explain that coming from the Afghan government, an ‘advisory’ a ‘prohibition’. As one Afghan Kabul hand pointed out, “If you read the Dari text, you’ll realise it’s a very, very impolite request.” “How can you do that? After all, it’s for the good of the Afghan people that they are given unbiased news. Surely, the Afghan media must stand up, ” hrrmphed a British journo. Once the talk veered to who would go to jail if the channel was hauled up, however, it was decided that the local hand would do the honours.

That Drinking Feeling
As I entered the Gandamack Lodge – through a bunker-like series of buzzered iron doors -- I momentarily left Kabul behind and entered that nefarious zone known in the trade as the ‘Hang-out Joint for the International Expat’. This was a place owned by a Briton married to an Afghan lady and as I walked in, I realised that the man who came out limping on crutches did not receive his injuries by falling down the stairs. The posters of ‘Zulu’ and British imperial prints drove the ambience home. And there across the open-air garden was a beautiful mirage: a well-stocked bar. In the heart of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, with the Teetotaliban knocking about somewhere or the other, there were bottles of Jacob’s Creek and cans of cold beer to choose from. I had two cans of Heinekens and was thankful that unlike back home, Afghanistan doesn’t actually have dry days. Not even on Election Day.